Friday, 9:30 PM: Two hundred sweaty bodies descend on Greylock dining hall for up-and-coming indie rock sensation Vampire Weekend.

More photos to come.
-Ben Rudick ‘08
www.benrudick.com

Before we begin, I’d just like to point out that Noons does a great job in the comments on the original thread on this topic.

David quotes a section K. Roy Garcia ’08’s little WSO rant below. I think he quotes it out of context, so I’m going to reproduce the whole thing so readers can judge for themselves. Cross the flip if you’re interested. Personally, I think the rant is pure attention-seeking with a touch of insane-o, and the WSO regulars (full disclosure: I’m one of them) are right to be unimpressed.

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Recently reading Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here written in 1935 about a fascist takeover of the United States. Lewis writes the following description of one James Buck Titus:

James Buck Titus, who was fifty but looked thirty-eight, straight, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, long-mustached, swarthy — Buck was the Dan’l Boone type of Old American, or, perhaps, an Indian-fighting cavalry captain, out of Charles King. He had graduated from Williams, with ten weeks in England and ten years in Montana, divided between cattle-raising, prospecting, and a horse-breeding ranch. His father, a richish railroad contractor had left him the great farm near West Beulah, and Buck had come back home to grow apples, to breed Morgan stallions, and to read Voltaire, Anatole France, Nietzsche, and Dostoyefsky. He served in the war, as a private; detested his officers, refused a commission, and liked the Germans at Cologne. He was a useful polo player, but regarded riding to the hounds as childish. In politics, he did not so much yearn over the wrongs of Labor as feel scornful of the tight-fisted exploiters who denned in office and stinking factory. He was as near to the English country squire as one may find in America.

Titus is a friend of the of the protagonist Doremus Jessup. While the college is only mentioned once of twice more in a very cursory way, Titus is one of the novel’s heros and does Williams proud, even if only in fiction. (Sinclair Lewis lived in Williamstown for a time and perhaps saw knew of a “James Buck Titus”.)

Katie Couric’s commencement address has garnered some comment from blogosphere heavyweight TalkingPointsMemo. Check it out. How often does Williams pop up on TPM?

The New York Times had a recent article about colleges offering on-campus burial plots for alumni. The article, “Colleges Offering Campuses as Final Resting Places,” notes, “In an era when many people are highly mobile and do not settle in one place for long, a college can have a strong allure as a final resting place.”

I believe Williams used to offer such a service to alumni, but since the burial ground is filling up (it’s next to Mission Park, and it’s a great place for snagging some rays in late Spring), it’s now only available to faculty.

The New York Times today ran an article on Williamstown entitled, “Sometimes You Can Go Home Again.” The alum factoids are:

It appears that Williams graduates can’t get enough of Williamstown. Real estate agents reported that around 10 percent of home sales were to second-home owners, and they also estimated that close to 40 percent of those were Williams alumni. “When they graduate from Williams, they don’t want to leave,” Mr. Fachini said. “There’s something about it that keeps them coming back.”

Stephen Birrell, vice president for alumni relations and development at Williams, said: “As a group, Williams alum are extraordinarily loyal and devoted. The college is happy to have alums in town, but we don’t have to do anything to encourage them. They just come.”

Is this claim from Wikipedia correct?

Benjamin Braddock, the main character of the The Graduate, is widely believed to have attended Williams College. In the opening sequence of the movie, Dustin Hoffman playing Benjamin Braddock, is wearing a Williams College tie.

Most agree that Braddock attended Williams. The author of the book on which the movie was based was Charles Webb ‘61. The book begins “Benjamin Braddock graduated from a small Eastern college on a day in June.” The number of small Eastern colleges with June graduations is not large.

But is Hoffman wearing a Williams tie in the movie? I don’t remember that. If so, we need a picture! Or, better, a video. Please help us, loyal readers.

Lots of interesting arts news in the Williamstown / North Adams corridor the last few months, none of which (I believe) has yet to be mentioned here. In my view, one of the best things that can happen to the region is a continued influx of artists and museum visitors. Not only because art / artists / art aficionados are cool, but when artists come, interesting cafes, restaurants, and bars tend to follow.

First, Sol LeWitt, creator of the iconic wall drawing in the WCMA, recently passed away. But his legacy will live on for at least the next 25 years at MassMoca, which has commissioned what looks to be a spectacular semi-permanent installation of his enormous wall drawings. Just the sort of art that MassMoca is uniquely positioned to exhibit due to its cavernous, raw spaces, and something which I imagine will attract a lot of visitors to North Adams.

Speaking of North Adams, the Contemporary Artists Center recently disclosed a plan to potentially move into the vacant Notre Dame Church in downtown North Adams. Bringing more art and artists downtown while rehabilitating unused historic downtown space seems like a win-win proposition.

In less happy news from North Adams (and a cautionary tale about relying too much on artists, who have a tendency to be, ummm, unpredicatable, as an engine for economic growth), an interesting article on a dispute over an installation at MassMoca’s Building Five (which has housed some of the coolest contemporary exhibits I’ve seen, as well as some truly cryptic ones).

While I’m on North Adams, a little off the art topic, but I had to mention this. A microbrewery is coming to town!!! I very, very much hope that Cold River eventually expands to become a brew pub feauring food and a bar. There is no equivalent in the immediate area, and I am sure that Williams students and young faculty would prove to be very loyal and enthusiastic customers if the food and beer are top quality.

Back to art, one more topic that I’ve heard, strangely, very little about: the Clark’s massive expansion. Is this underway? If so, how does the progress look so far? The plans look spectacular, and I like the idea of another full service restaurant in Williamstown as part of the plans.

Finally, the Clark, among other area attractions, gets a mention in this recent NYTimes feature on family activities in the Berkshires. As someone who has recently completed a llama hike in the D.C. area, I highly recommend it for kids and adults alike.

Lots of interesting stuff from Swarthmore Professor Tim Burke. I like his thoughts on the granularity of respect and on writing intensive classes. Williams has some professor bloggers but no professor, like Burke, writing about the policies of the College. We need that.

OK, what ’05’s black Jetta TDI (Dodd tags, Connecticut plates) is parked in front of my white GLS? Your interior lights are on.

At Dave’s invitation, I’m posting an amended and expanded verson of my earlier comment on his call to limit class size at Williams.

In an earlier thread, it was proposed that Williams could improve student experience by setting a cap on class size and assigning other faculty to teach sections of any course that exceeds this cap. It sounds like a sensible idea, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Here’s why:

–Today, student demand is infinitely elastic, while faculty staffing is notoriously
inelastic. Of course, Williams could follow the model of urban public institutions
and take on an army of part-time faculty who can be hired and fired as student
demand dictates. That, however, violates every tradition of Williams and in
any case can’t be implemented here because the North Berkshires region has only
a limited pool of under-employed PhDs willing to work for a pittance.

–People tenured two decades ago when Department X was hot are now teaching
small classes because students decided that they want to take courses in Department
Y, which has become more fashionable. Consider the case of Chinese, which a
few years ago taught small classes–as it should–with notable success. Suddenly,
bright Williams students figured out that China is the future, and the program
is dealing with an onslaught of frosh in its introductory courses. Five years
from now, the wave is likely to shift to something else. In the absence of a
required curriculum that exerts some control over demand, tracking student course
preferences requires the nerves of a day-trader, not the steady hand of a college
administrator committed to the long view. And Williams is committed to the long
view, which is one reason it’s a great college.

–Reassigning faculty to teach smaller sections of a large course has only
limited utility for at least two reasons. First, many of these faculty won’t
feel qualified to teach the course, and they may have little interest in doing
so. (It would be a bit like asking a dermatologist to serve as a neurologist
for three months.) Second, and more important, they are scheduled to teach other
courses that are required by their department curriculum so that majors can
complete their degrees. Even if a department has only a handful of senior majors
in a given year, a couple of courses have to be taught for them regardless of
the enrollment. In any case, precise levels of demand are never known until
a semester begins, but by then it’s too late for the department to drop and
add courses. (Williams used to ask students to pre-enroll for both Fall and
Spring terms of the next academic year, but the enrollment data proved unreliable.)

The problem here is what IT people call scalability. Student demand
can change almost instantly–and believe me, it does. Faculty supply, however,
takes a year or more to change, at least as long as Williams is committed to
doing national searches to hire the best faculty. And regardless of demand at
any given moment, prudent management requires college administrators to ask,
How many faculty in Field X can a balanced college handle? To give an example,
we already have the largest Economics faculty of any small liberal-arts college
of which I’m aware. For comparison, check out Amherst’s
Econ faculty: 15 names on the masthead; Williams,
35 names. (The number of names doesn’t translate directly into full-time teaching
because of leaves, administrative appointments, etc., but it’s a rough metric.)
And yet Econ struggles to meet student demand. That’s partly because it’s a
terrific department, partly because Williams attracts more business-oriented
students than, say, Smith
(18 names) or Oberlin
(ten).

In short, viable solutions to the class-crowding problem require the shaping
of supply and demand. Demand is controlled through curricular requirements and, to a more limited extent, through admissions policies. If you look at other liberal-arts colleges that
have imposed a cap on class size–and there are a few, I believe–you’ll find
that this is how they do it.

Some years ago, I chaired a faculty committee that looked at the class-crowding problem. Among other things, we discovered that something like 40 percent of Williams class sections were smaller than 14 students. That number of small sections is much higher now because of the tutorial program. Any students looking for small classes can find them in abundance at Williams–especially if they are willing to sign up for sections that meet at 8:30 AM!

Thanks to commenter BHC for pointing out today’s Get Fuzzy.

The wedding of my friend and teammate Kenny Marines ‘01 to Jen Greene ‘02 was listed in the New York Times’ wedding announcements on Sunday. Congratulations to a long-standing and lovely couple, and best of luck to them as they begin the rest of their lives together.

David, I don’t know whether they met during Winter Study (and I doubt that they lived across the same quad, as they were a year apart), but they were definitely a Williams couple, so that’s one more for you.

Though I knew about the nuptuals since the summmer, the reason I found out about the announcement was because David Lat (formerly of Article III Groupie and then Wonkette, now running a legal tabloid called AboveTheLaw) listed Ken’n'Jen in his Legal Eagle Wedding Watch post today and in fact, named them this week’s winners. Lat’s commentary is highly complementary and quite amusing — one might even call it gushing. (emphasis below is mine):

Résumé score: 8.7. Both are Williams College grads. She went to Brooklyn Law (cum laude), clerked for a bankruptcy judge (in the S.D.N.Y.), and will be going into bankruptcy — the department, not the financial state — at Simpson Thacher (the other highlight of their credentials, besides Williams). He’s an associate at the Tishman Speyer real estate firm.
…
Balance score: 8.7. Hard to gauge the impressiveness (or profitability) of Kenny’s employment with Tishman Speyer; but it seems to us that Jennifer has the edge.
Beauty score: 9.4. Yes, this is one of the highest scores we’ve awarded in a long time — but check out that photo! They’re both gorgeous. If she’s 5′8″ or above, she belongs on a runway. And so does he. You know someone is truly beautiful when they look great even with a shaved head. It’s all about the features.
Overall score: 8.80.
Additional comments: Extra points if this is a multi-ethnic union. A rabbi officiated, so one or both of them is Jewish; but we’re guessing that Kenny is Latino, based on the names of his parents (Emelania Fernandez and Juan Marines).
…
THIS WEEK’S WINNING COUPLE: Jennifer Greene and Kenny Marines. Their exceedingly high beauty score gave them a lead over the two other couples that they never relinquished. Congratulations!

So, I’m at work reading a trademark PLI guide authored by a “Siegrun D. Kane.” A few names on the dedication page jog my memory from David’s prior discussions of his family, leading to the inescapable conclusion that Siegrun is some sort of close relative of David Kane, or else comes from an eerily similar family. An even bigger clue of some sort of familial resemblance was the appendix addressing the evils of cluster housing at selected colleges (OK, I made that last part up, but don’t think I didn’t check). There is apparently no escaping Ephblog! (The guide was very helpful, by the way).

Hello again, Ephblog. It’s been over a year since my first and only post, and I’ve decided to return in style.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting a series of 9 photos, one from each month of the 2005/2006 academic year. I’m calling the series “A Year in Photos” for lack of a more snappy name (feel free to send suggestions). These photos represent some of my most memorable moments of last year and pave the way for fresh photographic goodness in the months to come.

September: Dance Studio at Night (click for larger image)

In case you don’t recognize it, this photo is of the dance rehearsal studio of the ‘62 Center for Theatre and Dance. 2005-2006 was the inaugural year of the ‘62 Center, a multi-million dollar facility that has been in the works since the dawn of time. And as is the case with all of the colleges’ uber-expensive facilities, this building could not have been possible without some Generous donations (notice the capital “G”). In this case, the main donors were Herb Allen and Bob Lipp. To thank them for their tax-deductible philanthropy, the Office of Alumni Relations prepared some pretty serious thank you gifts.

Such as this photo. Early in July of 2005, I got a call from Rob White, director of communications for the Alumni Office, asking to commission a photograph of the dance studio.

This presented several problems: I had just started photography that Fall (my freshman year) and still had no idea what I was doing; I had never done an architectural shoot before; I had never had to “create” an image before, and thus plan every aspect of the shoot (time of day, angle, interior/exterior, models, etc). I don’t even think I had a tripod at this point. I was entirely unqualified for this type of work. Still, I accepted and managed to survive the ordeal. The photo was eventually printed 20″X30″, framed, matted, and presented to Bob Lipp by our prez at a fancy dinner. I got to meet Bob Lipp a few weeks after at a seperate ‘62 Center schmooz (also fancy), and have to say that he is by far the coolest billionaire I’ve hung out with (hung out = shook hands).

And if you’re wondering how I got that angle…

As a side note, riding on a cherry picker at night is terrifying. And this is coming from someone isn’t afraid of heights. To me, fear of heights is anxiety caused by imagining the improbable situation of falling from a secure position far above the ground. The quite probable situation of falling from a moving cherry picker while trying to wrangle 20lbs of photo equipment isn’t fear of heights, it’s fear of death. Quite another thing all together.

Ephblog gets brilliant results from Seth Brown ‘01:

“Mountains Rap”

Yo, kings of the mountain lands, represent
Stand tall in the sky, so the whole world sees.
The place where we dwell ain’t made of cement,
But there’s grass and water and mother-fuckin’ trees

And mountains! The mountains! We greet them with a song,
The echo comes back and the world sings along
From the wind and the river to the valley and the hill,
If you ain’t sung praise to the mountains yet, you will.

Read the whole thing

This is an Eph Diary of sorts. This summer, my dad is helping to install plumbing for air ducts in a lobster hatchery near my house. How, you may wonder, is this a Thing Eph? Let me tell you.

I spent last fall at Williams-Mystic, where one of the courses is Marine Policy, for which each student chooses a current marine policy issue and talks to real live people on each side of the issue, eventually writing a paper. Mine was on the issue of aquaculture off the coast of the island upon which I live. One day, I was looking at the news and noticed that the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship recipients had been announced, and I looked at the list on a whim.

It turned out that a lobsterman (who also happened to have a marine biology degree) on my island had been awarded one of the fellowships, and that his project was to create a lobster hatchery to ensure that there would be enough lobsters to keep the island’s lobster economy going. Since my topic was aquaculture, and hatching lobsters and releasing them into the water to catch later is a form of aquaculture, I called him up. And so it went; I actually ended up interviewing his wife, who just happened to be the former head of the Maine marine policy bureau. My parents made their acquaintance, and now my dad is helping him do plumbing. Such a thing might never have happened without Williams-Mystic and its emphasis on learning by doing and by talking to actual people.

By the way, during the coming academic year when more people read EphBlog, I may continue my “Mystic Mondays” to further elucidate the mystical things that occur at Williams-Mystic.

A current high school senior writes on College Confidential:

I Pledge to Turn Down Harvard, Yale, and/or Princeton for Williams in RD… Because Williams freaking rocks. Any joiners?

Answers: Affirmative!

most of us turned down HYP by applying to Williams Early. Williams is once in a lifetime. HYP u can always go for in graduate school

I’ll turn down Dartmouth for Williams

lol same here– williams… i droool.

i’m with you…i applied ED, so i definitely chose Williams over all the ivies. Why? As you said, Williams ROCKS!!!

Well, we certainly agree with that. I for one congratulate them on making the right choice.

(I found out about this thread because one of them linked to my ode on the subject.)

It seems that Williams isn’t the only school I’ve attended that has opened its doors to Katrina victims. An excerpt from my high school alumni news:

In response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Regis has broken a 91-year tradition and accepted our first transfer student, a young man from Jesuit High in New Orleans.

Kudos to the admnistrators involved in what was not likely to be an easy decision, and, of course, kudos to those at Williams as well.

In most countries, college admissions is a simple procedure. You fill out a form, check the colleges you’re applying to, take a standardized test, and have your high school send your grades to the college board. If your grades and test scores are good enough, you’re in, even at the best colleges. Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker describes the origin of the comparatively arcane and subjective admissions process used by elite American colleges.

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Having watched the Katrina disaster unfold during the past week, I, for one, am hoping the college is thinking of using its intellectual resources to explore why things went so wrong in a course or series of lectures, perhaps over Winter Study.

The ripple effects of Katrina — the devastation, the deaths, the suicides, the higher energy prices, the shifting of families — will affect our lives in the years to come. In addition, this episode is full of intersecting dynamics and myriad shades of grey. (For a fascinating yet depressing read, check out this description of trying to get out of New Orleans last week.)

Accordingly, Katrina deserves to be studied with all the multi-disciplinary rigor that Williams can muster. It is both a relevant and difficult problem that can be turned into a learning experience that will stick with today’s students for the rest of their lives.

This could be a Winter Study course, or to make it more accessible to more students and the Williamstown community at large, perhaps a series of lectures/discussions held in the ‘62 Theatre.

As an example of what I mean, following is a tentative syllabus.

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On Wednesday, The New York Times had an article on colleges adding locally grown food to their menus. The article mentioned Bates, Kenyon, Middlebury and Oberlin, but not Williams.

At this point, at least this Williams alum thought, “Hmm… I know Williams is doing some of this; I wonder what the Williams-specific take on this is.” And then, viola, I discovered this was covered in Jocelyn Gardner’s senior thesis for Human Ecology and Environmental Studies entitled, “Think Globally, Eat Locally: An Analysis of Williams College’s Food Consumption.”

If you’re wondering about the dynamics of offering locally grown produce and running a college food service, this makes pretty interesting reading, as she takes the time to set the problem in context. Jocelyn spends the first 30 pages describing the history of agriculture in the U.S., the next 20 talking about Berkshires agriculture, and then the next 25 about food consumption and Dining Services at Williams. She closes with five pages of recommendations.

Some factoids. During the 2003-2004 academic year, Williams served 775,000 meals and spent $2.44 million buying food. Meat, fish, and poultry was 34% of that expenditure, fruits and vegetables was 11%. Williams spent $13,830.77 on hot dogs and $4,880.78 on cottage cheese. Per capita consumption of beef for the year was 32.1 pounds; ice cream, 25.9 pounds.

She has some heartbreaking quotes from Bershire farmers who have had to get out of the business, and discusses the tradeoffs that Dining Services has to consider in order to offer fresh and interesting food without breaking the bank. Highly recommended.

It’s been interesting watching traffic from Ephblog turn up on my blog. After David pointed to my blog on August 20th, I’ve received a steady stream of visitors: 27 so far, to be exact. From far away — Korea, the UK — and from prestigious universities — Cambridge in England and Princeton in the U.S. Even someone from Williams — I can’t tell whether it’s a student or administrator — clicked over.

For those who wonder about Ephblog’s reach, take a look at the affiliated SiteMeter page. At this moment, it’s reporting that Ephblog gets 412 visits a day. The last 100 visits superimposed on a world map is sort of interesting as well.

So for those privacy freaks, yes, Big Brother is watching.

In the course of meandering through some Google results, I ran into this Web page, which describes what the Class of 1906 was doing five years after graduation.

It’s a time capsule of sorts. First, the class was less than a third the size of today’s classes: 148 vs. 500. Second, many were engaged in manufacturing, compared to today’s emphasis on service jobs (lawyers, physicians, teachers). Third, although some had made it to Colorado, Washington, or the all encompassing “in the West,” most were living in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. And finally, good health, which we pretty much take for granted, was not the case in 1911. For example:

Basil Doliver Barlow: With Hornblower & Weeks, Bankers, until August 1909. Married Miss Florence Pratt in July 1908. With the Centennial Milling Co. of Spokane WA 1909. Wife Florence Pratt. Daughter Elizabeth born 12 Jan 1910. With the Columbia Valley Bank of Wenatchee WA 1910. Died 31 May 1910 of Typhoid Fever.

Luther Franklin Bodman: Left college at end of Sophomore year. Went to NC on account of ill health. Died Jan 1908.

Kenneth B. Coulter: 1139 Dearborn Ave., Chicago IL, at Harvard Univ for 2 years. An invalid due to paralysis. No info since 1909.

Morton Griswold: Harvard Law School 1909, engaged in law practice in NYC. Died 5 April 1910 at his former home in Wallingford CT of meningitis.

Russell Hobson: Died 22 Mar 1911 at Saranac Lake NY of tuberculosis.

Brockholst K. Miller: 744 Watchung Ave, Plainfield NJ, Had to give up law practice due to poor health, expects to locate in Salt Lake City UT and resume practice.

For any of you who were outside of Williamstown, or inside a building, last night at about 8:30, here’s what the sky looked like from the science quad over Bronfman and Clark. Four more pictures of the sky are in the extended entry.

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Stephen Hunter ‘07 has a new Web site, stopalberto.com. From the page:

Alberto Gonzales has a maladjusted personality that makes him one of the most Machiavellian individuals in our country (in some ways he’s worse than Ashcroft). Unfortunately he is Bush’s Attorney General. However, he could do far more damage as a Supreme Court Justice. We all need to take a few minutes out of our day to donate our time and money to moveon.org or any other progressive group. It is imperative that we StopAlberto before he further ruins this great nation of ours.

Steve, who is from Maine, is coordinating an effort to lobby his senators about this. You may also remember his political page of several months ago, Students Against Bush, which was more extensive but is not online anymore.

Joan Edwards of Williams College discusses in the recent issue of Nature how Canada’s bunchberry dogwood is the fastest plant on the planet. From Discovery Channel Online, Edwards is quoted:

“Our high-speed video observations show that the flower opens in less than 0.5 milliseconds, to our knowledge the fastest movement so far recorded in a plant.”
…
“Bunchberry stamens are designed like miniature medieval trebuchets — specialized catapults that maximize throwing distance by having the payload attached to the throwing arm by a hinge or flexible strap.”

(via BoingBoing)

According to the North Adams Transcript, streaking, a 70s thing, has been revived at Williams.

I remember a mass streak down at Mission in the dead of Winter in 73/74. Believe me, it’s quite a sight to see 40 naked men and women running through the snow. The amount of flopping and bobbing of various body parts gets kind of overwhelming en masse.

In the same month or so, a male streaker wearing a mask zoomed through Phoebe Cramer’s class in Bronfman Auditorium. The Williams Record had been alerted, and so took a picture of the deed. I recollect female classmates complaining that the published picture was too blurry for them to figure out who it was.

It’s unclear whether the Springstreakers get student funding. Probably not, since the College Council is no doubt worried that they’d turn up in their club uniforms at the funding request meeting.

In this week’s Legal Affairs Debate Club, David Boaz (Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute) is debating Judith Waxman, a vice president at the National Women’s Law Center, on whether pharmacists can legally and morally refuse to dispense prescription medications such as birth control or morning after pills. While the question is poorly phrased — it should be can pharmacy owners refuse to carry/dispense such drugs or can managers of a chain pharmacy refuse if they’re given discretion by the chain’s management — the reason I’m posting this here is because in his very first salvo, Boaz provided an anecdote from when he last spoke at Williams (when IIRC John Phillips ‘02 arranged for him to come to campus):

So the answer to the question is, Yes, pharmacists should be free to dispense and sell the products they choose. If you don’t want to offer medical marijuana in states where it’s legal, you shouldn’t have to. Health food stores don’t sell things they consider junk food. Some bookstores don’t sell Bibles, or right-wing books, or pornography. I remember being at a conference at Williams College a few years ago, and a friend went to the local Williamstown pharmacy and asked for a bottle of the mega-vitamins he was used to taking. The pharmacist said he shouldn’t take such a large dosage and refused to sell him tablets of that size. My friend was annoyed. But the pharmacist had a right to do what he thought best, just as my friend had a right to go to a different pharmacy.

The rest of the debate is very interesting, both from liberty and policy perspectives.

My girlfriend happened to link me to this NYT Article. It’s mildly entertaining, and it involves two Ephs!

[T]HE delicate posturing began with the phone call.

The proposal was that two buddies back in New York City for a holiday break in December meet to visit the Museum of Modern Art after its major renovation.

“He explicitly said, ‘I know this is kind of weird, but we should probably go,’ ” said Matthew Speiser, 25, recalling his conversation with John Putman, 28, a former classmate from Williams College.

…

Eager to cut the tension following what they perceived to be a slightly unmanly excursion - two guys looking at art together - they headed directly to a bar. “We couldn’t stop talking about the fact that it was ridiculous we had spent the whole day together one on one,” said Mr. Speiser, who is straight, as is Mr. Putman. “We were purging ourselves of insecurity.”

Come now, guys, it’s not that big of a deal. If you really are so insecure in your masculinity that you have to feel ashamed of going to a museum exhibit with a male friend, perhaps you would be best served staying in and watching Monday Night Football in your basement with a few six packs of Coors Original.